


remnants of that time (all that we have)

by miyawakii



Series: for safe-keeping (shortfics) [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, M/M, mostly for safe-keeping <3, posted on twitter but now we're here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25433323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miyawakii/pseuds/miyawakii
Summary: "Falling out of love is an extremely underwhelming phenomenon, Suga found out... It’s the opposite of 'falling in love' in the most literal way possible."
Relationships: Oikawa Tooru/Sugawara Koushi
Series: for safe-keeping (shortfics) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842163
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. the opposite of warmth

**Author's Note:**

> Life is too hectic lately... So here are some (very) short fics that I managed to churn out in between classes hehe  
> Thank you for reading <3

Falling out of love is an extremely underwhelming phenomenon, Suga found out.

It’s the opposite of falling in love in the most literal way possible. It’s not like falling in love, when the realization stole the breath out of your lung; not like the wide-eyed shock that makes the universe pause, for just a moment — in honor of such a monumental shift. It’s neither like the heat that soused your heart for ages and finally dared to rush to your chest, your stomach, your arm— leaving in its wake a celebration. For love. It didn't feel like summer; didn't feel anything like the gentle memories of someone's laughter, the kind that lilts with the breeze and carries your heart away, taunting but dear. It didn't taste like the clement sunshine of that one afternoon, kissing your arms, tingling and sweet. Didn't smell like sweet fruits of the season, when that someone's eyes wrinkled by the force of his own smile, the kind of pulchritude you wish to reserve but decided to offer to the passage of time.

No, it’s nothing of that fashion. If falling in love is everything, then falling out of it is nothing; Suga felt nothing in his chest but a hollowed-out phantom, a chasm of something that once was. He accepted it — surrendered, really — with a shrug of his shoulder.

(In the end, a dispassionate “oh” was the closing mark to a love that once left him wordless.

The sun in his memories, like everything else, was gone.)

But they were built from the same thing, really, falling in and falling out of love. Opposition, sometimes, isn’t 'nothing' versus 'everything', but it’s 'bitter' versus 'sweet'. Things that matter versus things that no longer. The realization that he fell out of love was a thing of that latter sort.

Suga found out that he doesn’t feel anything anymore, when Tooru made him his favorite omelette in the morning. Suga found out that he doesn’t feel anything anymore, when Tooru messed up the eggs, like he always does, and still laughs about it. He found out, the same way he found out that he doesn’t want to ice skate anymore just because Tooru loved it. The same way that he doesn’t enjoy things merely for the sake of Tooru anymore. The same way he found out that “Tooru” no longer has that special ring to its syllables anymore.

He found out, the same way he found out that his breath stayed irons in his lungs, still and heavy, despite the many times he whispered “Tooru” to a mirror, to his smile. It felt like the magic just faded out, but it is not. He knows that it is not. This is something... fundamental.

He knows, because this is the first time this happens, in the seven years that they were together. He knows, because when he watched 3-year-ago Koushi talking about how Tooru stole his breath away with a smile, he doesn’t feel anything other than the grief of memory forever gone.

Maybe the house felt the same, Suga mused; glancing at the marbled counter, the wonky wooden chair that he wasn't sure if he liked, at all. He glanced the patchiness of it all; the thing that once made him feel something rather than this coldness.

Maybe Tooru did, too, in the way they don’t look at each other anymore when they wake up. In the way the bathroom is never shared anymore. In the way he leaves the bed first, the thought of waiting for Tooru eroded away ages ago. The way they haven’t laughed, giggled, cackled at each other anymore in movies night. The way there weren’t even movies night anymore. The way Tooru no longer wants to watch his shitty comedy, the same way he doesn’t want to ice skate.

It's a revisit of memories — the same way falling in love was — but the memories were cold and distant. They were gray, the way this steely city always looked, the way the sky was — mourning, crying — the day they finally talked about it.

“It’s not special anymore, isn’t it?” If Suga allowed himself to be truthful, he would have admitted to the tremors in Tooru's breath.

“I supposed it isn’t.”

“It’s a piece of egg anyway, right? There wasn’t anything special about it in the first place.”

“I guess... the magic just wore off, then,” Suga mumbled, looking at the plate that Tooru placed in front of him.

(Was Tooru crying? Was he woeful? Aghast? Given up, just like him?)

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Don’t you feel anything anymore?" Suga breathed out, away went the shads of glass that impaled his throat, "In the morning? In the night, even when we go to bed together?”

“I supposed so.” 

“Sometimes, things aren’t meant to be forever, Tooru.”

“It was a good run though, was it?” Tooru breathed; from this angle, Suga has nothing else to see but the nervous twists of Tooru's hand. Left thumb twisted inside his right palm. Then the left forefinger. Then all of his fingers, criss-and-crossed, twice, before moving on to his middle finger. The same pattern as always.

“Yes, it was.” Suga vaguely felt his lips shaped into something resemblance of a smile, for the first time in weeks. For the first time, in weeks, that it was because of Tooru.

“I can stay with Iwa-chan until we can sort this out. You stay here.”

Breakfast was a silent ordeal, afterward. Suga begged his heart to feel something — desolation, woe, anguish, regret, longing — anything, any torture or pain that he can use to convince himself that this is real. But this is real, he knows.

This is real, because Suga was eating an omelette that was slightly charred at the bottom, the way Tooru’s omelette always is, and he pointed it out in his head like a well-rehearsed fact without any commotion in his heart. Without any warmth. This is real, because he can see the glistening tears that threatened to flood out of Tooru's delicate hold; can see the way Tooru rushed away right after, his steps carefully paced, and leave without a word goodbye.

Maybe it is the part of the reality, after all, that he felt nothing.

So why, when the door clicked shut, that his tears fell?

(What is he even crying for?)

endl;


	2. lost pearl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sometimes, things are sad because they used to be beautiful. 
> 
> Oikawa knows this, of course; knows it intimately, like the way he knows the crooked corner of Suga’s smile — always a bit higher on the left — from years ago."

Sometimes, things are sad because they used to be beautiful. 

Oikawa knows this, of course; knows it intimately, like the way he knows the crooked corner of Suga’s smile — always a bit higher on the left — from years ago.

(Somewhere in his memories, he remembered being 17. He remembered the lush green of Miyagi, of green mountain grazing blue sky, of a smile that curved like a valley, wide and clear. He remembered feeling bigger than the world that they were made for.)

He knows this, like he knows that beautiful things won’t last. It’s a universal truth to the broken-hearted; perhaps understanding this truth meant losing something — be it the beautiful entity, or the conviction in eternity, which, is another beautifully naive ideal in itself —

(In that same breath, he remembered being 19. Remembered feeling so, so much smaller than the world, than a foreign land with crass sun and zealous wind. But also remembered that, at night, when the sun retired, the caress of a moonly smile rendered him big again; filling him up like streams to an ocean.)

Is it worth it? Tooru wondered, sometimes. Wonder if this bitter medicine is the exchange for an antidote to beguiling illusions. Is it okay just to resign forever into fantasy? In other times, Tooru realized that he has no choice, either way, because humans are inherently ephemeral.

What beautiful things, humans used to be.

At one point, the only traces of them he was allowed to keep, are those lies humanity fondly call memories; lies, because it can’t ever be affirmed. It’s either wrong or right, and there was proof for neither. The truth-bearers were the time that was behind, rests at the moment that memories were born, and one can never retrace their steps.

(At one point, he remembered being 22. Stable and brave, the words once foreign on his tongue then twisted and turned fluidly in a tango; remembered the whisper of “I love you” they exchanged at night, playfully bedizened in foreign codes.

He remembered plans and promises. Of returning to Japan, soon, maybe Sendai or even Tokyo, wherever they would have him, and Suga moving in. They will have a cat, they mused, maybe two, whom Suga will always bring to his matches.

He remembered being 24, and promises became reality, in a cramped apartment somewhere in a folded corner of Tokyo.)

They are lies, Tooru thought, because there is no way to tell if they are true, if they are precise. The same way he is no longer sure if Koushi liked hiking, or just agreed to go because he loves Tooru; if their tent was bought during a Christmas weekend or on a dateless whim.

If Koushi ever did scold him for buying it, since they have never needed a tent before. If, when Tooru suggested that they stayed overnight on the mountain, Koushi laughed or scowled.

It was so long ago, he can’t remember if he has broken into laughter or a whine. The same way he can’t really remember where Koushi’s mole was anymore. 

(The first time he forgot it — a minuscule detail in many, many things about Koushi — Tooru’s hysterical laughter shattered into tears.)

There is no way he can stop it, the flow of time. The wave and thunder of life erode away the bedrock of memories and the stories that used to be most intimate and secretive; they now laid bare, vulnerable, without another body to keep warm. All Tooru has now is fragments of truth melded with shards of lies, the type of mixture that he can’t ever sort out and have to live with that recognition, or to succumb himself into another soothing fantasy. To close the container of shattered glass and put it away.

But he chose to live it, chose to live the truth. And others think that he is an idiot.

“Koushi won’t want you to live like this, you know.” Iwaizumi sighed, the words clear above the hazy cacophony of the bar.

A new one, in a different part of town; three hours away from where they used to live. That is just how he lives his life, nowadays. 

(He hasn’t returned to any of their spots, ever since… )

“I don’t, Iwa-chan, because he isn’t here anymore, is he?” 

“I don’t know if this is just another existential crisis thing of yours, or if you have truly lost your mind.”

“It is not losing my mind if I am aware of the truth.”

“What truth, Oikawa?” Iwaizumi grunted, “What is the truth in drowning in your own brain like this? Why does it matter at all!?” 

“Because this is life!” Tooru hollered, nearly flinging away the shot glass in front of him, “This is the way we will have to live! I don’t want… I don’t want to live in any lies anymore!”

Beside him, Iwaizumi took a moment. Then, a deep breath, and a weak excuse of a whisper, “He did it to protect you, you know.”

“So much good that it did.”

“Maybe because he knew that if you know, you’d live your life like this.”

“And yet, here I am.”

“Maybe it was stupid that he tried to hide the diagnosis from you, Tooru, maybe it was.” Iwaizumi shook his head, ruff and annoyed-looking as usual, but his voice drenched in worry, “But isn’t it also stupid that you let yourself wallowed in grief!? It’s been... It’s been three years, Tooru. 

“You are destroying yourself over things that can’t be helped.”

(He remembered being 27 and a half, when everything fell apart.)

It’s been three years.

It’s been three years, and Tooru still hasn't cleared Koushi’s things in the house. His side of the closets is still intact. The clumsy paintings that he painted, the burned frying pan that he was adamant that it must be nailed to the wall, displayed to the world.  It’s been three years, and Tooru still can’t seem to walk away from that hospital bed

“This is too much, Tooru,” Iwa-chan repeated, the sound hazy like a cloud, somewhere far away. 

It’s been three years, and Koushi’s hollowed smile still haunts his dream. (‘Don’t smile like that’, some selfish part of him had begged. ‘Don’t ruin your smile for me.’)

“If you don’t clean out the house, then I will have to do it.” 

It’s been three years, and he can still feel the ghost of Koushi’s fingers caressing his cheeks. (‘It will be okay. You will be okay, Tooru.’ the ghost whispered.)

(He remembered the last time Koushi laughed, the chord of it scraped his throat, just to survive to see the world. He remembered how Koushi laughed with all that he could, no longer have the strength to care about time. ‘Whatever I have left, let it be happy, Tooru.’)

“Please, Tooru, fight me on anything, but not this. Please, let me do it.” He hasn’t been looking at his best friend, but Tooru figured that his eyes are trembling, like his throat.

Maybe he doesn’t need to make a choice at all, to ignore or to not ignore, if he walks away from it completely. Climb out of the deep philosophical hole he dug himself in. “Do whatever, Iwa-chan.”

“Stay with me and Daichi, then, until you figure out if you want to join us.” 

“The frying pan stays, though, right?”

“Sure. If it makes things easier.”

It’s been three years. Exactly three years, since the last time Tooru saw Koushi’s crooked grin — always a little bit higher on the left. It’s been three years, and he finally gave in. Decided to let his tears wash out the shattered fractures of life.

( _ Will he remember anything, five, ten, fifteen years from now? _ Tooru wondered, _ if none of them remained to pierce his heart? _ )

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D go on scream at me :D :D

**Author's Note:**

> endl; is a c++ reference... haha... did yall get it...
> 
> (anw its just kind of a spacebar mark to start a new line it isn't anything special... the end of a function is marked by "return ___" but it doesn't fit here...  
> alas it is just for the aesthetic...)
> 
> link to the original thread: https://twitter.com/39maow/status/1276128910921654272?s=20


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